I’ve never dreamed of being royalty, waving from a balcony to adoring subjects, or wanted to walk a red carpet surrounded by fans. But there’s one fantasy I do nourish, and it’s at the forefront of my mind these days.

I would love to be appointed Major League Baseball commissioner, with such absolute power that “baseball czar” would be a better title.

As I’ve watched this game I love being tweaked and twisted into something that would be almost unrecognizable to a great old-time fan like my Dad, who died in 1970, I’ve found few of those changes are for the better.

Take the DH, or as it’s formally known, the designated hitter rule. Adopted by the American League in 1973, it allows a manager to “designate” a 10th player (baseball teams traditionally have nine) to bat in what would normally have been the pitcher’s turn at bat. The idea was suggested, I hate to admit, by my Philly hometown icon Connie Mack in 1906. It took another 67 years for the AL to adopt it. The National League voted against adopting it in 1980, and has never voted on it again.

The advantages are obvious. Yes, since most pitchers can’t hit, the DL may speed up games with more hitting action, the way lowering the mound and changing the strike zone did when pitchers were becoming dominant in the mid-1960s.

But it means a player can spend his entire career in baseball without ever picking up a bat. And DHs do nothing but hit for the pitcher, never going into the field to play defense. Like the current expectation that few pitchers will last nine innings, it’s not an idea purists like me embrace as true baseball.

Other changes: Why not set a salary cap, so no player gets a scandalously multimillion dollar contract before he’s started the season? Sign players with a fair flat rate salary, then pay them again at season’s end based on what they’ve achieved that year. Reward merit, not potential.

Get rid of all the agents (or at the very least give them useful jobs, like scouts or analysts). It’s the celebrity agents who’ve boosted salaries so ludicrously high that every facet of baseball’s budget has exploded. Ticket prices are too high; parking adds $15 to $45. A cup of beer runs $6 to $9 and the $4.50 hotdog no longer shocks us.

Shorten contracts. Why give a player a six-year contract at megamillions a year when chances are good that injury or age may disable him before it runs out? Keep parks small, and give some thought to their history, as well as the moolah to be made by tearing them down to add more luxury boxes for the elite. Turn off the booming piped-in music between plays. Schedule more late afternoon games so kids and aging boomers can easily attend. Forget interleague play.

Stick to the original 162-game schedule where winning a pennant meant something. Dump the wild card and absurdly long post-season playoffs that run into late October, allowing top teams to lose to second best teams for a World Series spot.

Not a fan? Well, sure, baseball can sometimes seem slow. But like ballet, every movement has meaning, and like chess, there is strategy. So remember what the game has meant to America and don’t exploit it: salute it.